Archives
2003: Vol.
2, Numbers 1-12Read
past articles including:Series
on Leadership continued
Avoiding Dictatorship in a Free SocietyArt
and Politics Living
the Good LifeTeaching
Teens World
Peace in Less Than a Month?

Is it possible that the more
pain that exists in the world the more we tolerate
it? Perhaps as a natural protection against emotional
stress and collapse we anesthetize ourselves against
feeling too much.

Then, what is pain — physical pain, emotional pain,
mental anguish, frustration, feelings of powerlessness
in face of the enormity of world problems and human
suffering? We witnessed a tremendous outpouring of
charity after great, consciousness bending tragedies
like 9/11, the tsunami in south Asia, and hurricane
Katrina. Shortly, however, we became saturated and
we experienced donor fatigue – that point when
one tunes out tragedies because there are so many.
This makes us ignore the many on-going, persistent
ones — the AIDS pandemic, the genocide and hunger
in Darfur, the daily death toll in Iraq, civil war
in the Congo, the plight of children throughout the
world….

After an accident this past summer
I was asked by
the paramedics treating me to rank my pain on a scale
of 0-10. I found this an absurd request. The following
poem, “A
Matter of Scale” expresses my feelings about
pain.

A Matter of Scale

The paramedic asked me to rate my pain
on a scale of zero to ten
stabbing, throbbing, the numb of shock —
pain is pain, but then
I saw the face of the beautiful child,
her shoulders, arms, her lifeless frame,
skin stretched tight, transparent thin
over death soon to come from hunger
in her mother’s arms,
flies in the corners of tearless eyes.

My bones out of place, shivering with cold
on a hot summer’s day
my pain perhaps an eight, but then
I heard screams from war zones on the news
and saw a man, panic on his face,
running from the horror, seeking escape —
a boy of maybe nine or ten,
legs that once kicked a soccer ball in fun,
in his father’s arms,
a bloody bundle, twisted and torn.

White, air-conditioned nausea, each move
a cold jab that evaporates
with the drip, drip of the I-V, but then
the hot dust of the camp blew in my eyes,
not enough guns to push away the fear,
no past, no present, no future,
youth raped with the lust of empty cries,
no name, no home, no pride,
no comforting arms for the refugee —
just a hollow bowl, a forgotten life.